1. Field
Embodiments generally relate to reporting of business data in documents using the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL).
2. Related Art
XBRL is a standardized computer language by which businesses may efficiently and accurately communicate business data with each other and with regulating agencies. XBRL enables the association of data tags to describe information in a company's financial statements. This process, commonly called “tagging,” associates data values with metadata (additional information about the data). The information can then be searched, reorganized for analytical purposes, and processed into human readable formats such as spreadsheets or other tabular renderings. XBRL also allows financial statements in foreign languages to be translated into English, and vice versa.
For publicly-held companies that file reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), for example, financial statements must be tagged using XBRL. XBRL tagging is now a key part of the financial statement production process. The SEC requirements, covering interactive data reporting using XBRL, provide prescribed ways to represent data and its metadata, including rules about how the two should be associated.
The use of XBRL along with other systems, such as the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval (EDGAR) system, have facilitated greater transparency in the form of easier access to, and analysis of, financial reports and disclosures. Unfortunately, however, the preparation of documents in these systems is often a laborious and error-prone task. Users face problems associated with the general incompatibility between standard spreadsheet and word processing programs as well as version control problems that arise when multiple users edit the same document. Errors in an XBRL document can also be difficult to detect, understand, and correct. Because of these complexities, the time and expense associated with creating XBRL documents has traditionally been very high.